Biographical profile |
Jim Kouzes has been cited as one of the twelve best executive educators in the United States by the Wall Street Journal. He is the coauthor with Barry Posner of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, with over 2.5 million copies sold and available in twenty-two languages. He’s also the Dean’s Executive Fellow of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. Kouzes has been thinking about leadership ever since he was one of only a dozen Eagle Scouts to be selected to serve in John F. Kennedy’s honor guard when Kennedy was inaugurated President of the United States. Kennedy’s inaugural call to action--“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,”--inspired him to join the Peace Corps, and he taught school in Turkey for two years. That experience made him realize that he wanted a career that offered two things--the chance to teach and the opportunity to serve. After returning from the Peace Corps in 1969, Kouzes’ career in training and development began when he conducted seminars for Community Action Agency staff and volunteers in the War on Poverty, a signature initiative of the Johnson administration closely associated with John Gardner. Kouzes has devoted his life to leadership development ever since. He first encountered Gardner’s work in the mid-1960s when Self-Renewal was published, following Gardner’s career, writings and ideas long before he met him at Stanford. Kouzes calls Gardner a seminal leader-scholar and one of his personal heroes who had a major influence on his own thinking about leadership as a field of study and practice. Currently Kouzes lectures on leadership around the world to corporations, governments, and nonprofits. In 2010, he received the Thought Leadership Award from the Instructional Systems Association, the most prestigious award given by the trade association of training and development industry providers. He was listed as one of HR Magazine’s Most Influential International Thinkers for 2010 and 2011, named one of the 2010 and 2011 Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior by Trust Across America, and ranked by Leadership Excellence magazine as number sixteen on its list of the Top 100 Thought Leaders. In 2006, he was presented with the Golden Gavel, the highest honor awarded by Toastmasters International.Also an experienced executive, Kouzes served as president, CEO, and chairman of the Tom Peters Company from 1988 through 1999, and prior to that led the Executive Development Center at Santa Clara University (1981–1987). He founded the Joint Center for Human Services Development at San Jose State University (1972–1980) and was on the staff of the School of Social Work, University of Texas. He holds a BA degree with honors in political science from Michigan State University.
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